Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/49

SECT. I.] TRIBES NORTH OF THE UNITED STATES. 13 Captain Clavering, the ensuing year, met with a tribe of Eski- maux in about 74° of north latitude. It appears almost incred- ible that they should have reached that spot, either by a land journey of eight hundred miles across Greenland, or the same distance along the frozen and inaccessible shores between Cape Farewell and the open sea in 69° of latitude. It is much more probable that, at a former period, the southern part of the eastern coast was free of ice, in which case we need not resort to the hypothesis, which places the old colony of East Greenland west of Cape Farewell. In the year 1001, an Icelander, driven by a storm, discovered land far southwest of Cape Farewell, where a colony was soon after sent from Greenland. The country was called Vin- land ; and, if we can rely on the assertion, that the sun re- mained eight hours visible during the shortest day of the year, must have been Newfoundland. There, positive mention is made of Indians, who from the description and the name of Skroellings, or dwarfs, given to them by the Normans, must have been Eskimaux. No mention is made of this European colony after the year 1121, when a bishop is said to have sailed from Greenland to Vinland. But it seems that, to a very late date, there existed in Newfoundland another race of Indians, extremely intrac- table, seen occasionally on the eastern seashore at the Bay Des Exploits, but residing, as was supposed, in the interior part of the island. These are said to be now extinct ; and it is not known, whether any vocabulary of their language, which might indicate their origin, has ever been obtained. Whatever may have been the origin of the Eskimaux, it would seem probable that the small tribe of the present Seden- tary Tchuktchi on the eastern extremity of Asia, is a colony of the Western American Eskimaux. The language does not extend in Asia beyond that tribe. That of their immediate neighbours, the " Reindeer" or " Wandering Tchuktchi," is totally different, and belongs to the Kouriak family. The vocabulary of the western American Eskimaux which has been selected, is that of Kotzebue's Sound immediately north of Behring's Straits, taken by Captain Beechy. That of the Tchuktchi, extracted from Krusenstern, was taken by Koscheloff; and a specimen has been added of the language of the island of Kadjak opposite to the Peninsula of Alaska, extracted from Klaproth's " Asia Polyglotta."